Iconic American Fashion, Streetwear & Denim Designer

The Beginning

The ascension of a 19-year-old Detroit visionary kid who created the first black-owned denim brand and broke through fashion's boundaries.

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1980's

Heritage Earned

From Detroit to New York and repeat: Maurice Malone evolved from denim to a global urban wear icon, breaking retail and designer fashion barriers along the way.

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1990’s

Pursuit, Pause, and Innovation

During the peak of his urban streetwear brand, Maurice decided to step away from it all in pursuit of happiness. Innovation, growth, resets, and pauses happened in this decade.

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2000's

Defined in Denim

To say Maurice is resilient is an understatement at this point. Malone returned to his roots in this decade, starting a new one-man denim brand with $2000. Denim enthusiasts now refer to him as "the man."

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2010's

40 Years Made

Spanning four decades of exceptional bad indigo, Maurice Malone's journey promises that the finest chapters are yet to unfold.

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2020's

The iconic 1990s urban streetwear advertisement titled Once I Was Abducted by Extraterrestrials features denim designer Maurice Malone wearing his renowned chain-link overalls. Cory Blake took this photograph in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1990s.

A close-up image without text, designer Maurice Malone, with subtle denim stitching visible in his skin and piercing eyes that mirror jean buttons, appears in his famed late 90s print advertisement. A true artist, Malone conceives, photographs, models, and produces the artwork in many of his ad campaigns under his alias Lenshead.

A Maurice Malone advertisement from the early 2000s, where a woman sits on top of a New York City skyscraper. She is dressed in a distinctive white skirt made of working shirt button placket and a shimmering silver tank top, which make her stand out against the urban scene.

A history of African American fashion and denim designer Maurice Malone's media articles and advertisements from the 1980s through 2020s

Has any African American done denim longer?

In the early 1980s, since high school, my studio was my mom's basement in Oak Park, Michigan. My cutting table was the pool table covered in plastic. Patterns-in-work taped to the walls.

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